Use Technology To Control Maintenance Costs and Drive Uptime

Penske Truck Leasing uses technology to reduce failure rates and identify maintenance issues early, lowering overall maintenance costs while improving customer uptime.

Maintenance is one of the top operational costs in trucking. The American Transportation Research Institute’s 2026 Operational Costs of Trucking report found that the cost per mile for repair and maintenance has increased to $0.215 in 2025, up 8.6% from the previous year and a new record high for the line item. What's more, fleet management is getting more complicated as vehicle technology advances at an increasingly rapid rate.

Penske has invested in its Dynamic Preventive Maintenance (Dynamic PM®) program and information analysis to improve maintenance quality and timeliness, directly affecting costs and performance.

Penske’s data has shown that maintenance needs can vary throughout a vehicle’s life depending on things like from what part of the country it operates. Now, technology lets technicians create specific action plans to provide the right maintenance at the right time, improving uptime and helping control costs.

Dynamic PM®

Using the vehicle's specs, repair history, age and application, Penske customizes preventive maintenance (PM) for each unit. When it comes in, technicians focus on the needs of the unit at that given point and time in its life and perform thorough inspections on certain components at certain ages based on failure analysis data. This approach reduces costs and unscheduled shop visits.

Penske also integrates voice technology into the PM program, enabling technicians to receive voice prompts via a headset that directs them through a detailed series of inspection steps. This ensures technicians don't miss any steps within a Dynamic PM.

Data Analysis

Penske works with its original equipment partners and draws on its extensive repair history database to identify reliability trends and analyze failure codes coming off of the engine. Penske’s team studies scenarios and patterns of fault codes and repairs to determine if something is about to fail. This lets the team schedule repairs instead of waiting for the vehicle to break down, which helps the customer.

Through code analysis, Penske can determine the urgency of the repair needed to clear the code. Based on that information, Penske's maintenance team can schedule the unit for immediate repair or at a time convenient for the customer. This reduces over-the-road breakdowns, cutting costs and unnecessary shop visits.

Keeping trucks running between shop visits has become more important and more difficult industry-wide. ATRI's 2026 report also found that the average mileage between unscheduled repairs or breakdowns fell to 36,891 miles in 2025, down from 38,249 in 2024, as average truck age and annual mileage both increased.

By working with various technologies, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and component partners, Penske can spec accessories or components that help drive uptime, fuel economy and driver retention.

For example, Penske can use telematics with a tire pressure monitoring system or an automatic tire inflation system. Penske’s team can identify tires that are losing air and will eventually fail if action is not taken. Proper tire inflation improves fuel economy, and better fuel economy and uptime are major benefits for the customer.